Conventional commercially available process cheeses have hitherto been prepared by the process as illustrated in FIG. 1 which comprises preparing a raw material by mixing cheese with a secondary material and the like; heat emulsifying the resulting raw material into a molten state; continuously passing said molten material through a cooling cylinder to semi-solidify said material; extruding a semisolid stick of said material through a nozzle; cutting said stick in fixed lengths by means of a rotary cutter or reciprocating cutter disposed in front of said nozzle and arranged to operate at fixed intervals; and thereafter packing a product after it is made into an intended shape by means of a suitable machine or packing a product as cut by said cutter.
However, the above mentioned conventional apparatus is defective in that since the viscosity of cheese is liable to conspicuously increase as its temperature is reduced and the cheese, is subject to structural non-uniformity when the thermal conductivity is deteriorated and so forth, it is impossible to maintain the extruding speed constant and consequently it is difficult to maintain the cutting lengths constant.
Further, said conventional apparatus is defective in that since the cut sticks can not be made into spherical bodies without re-applying the former to another making machine as stated above, it is impossible to perform a continuous operation extending from extrusion molding to formation of spherical bodies, thereby deteriorating the manufacturing capacity.
Still further, up to now there has not been developed a molding apparatus capable of producing the spherical bodies as mentioned above which are free from distortion, automatically and continuously.